Chevron Plant Charged With Polluting Bay

The U.S. Justice Department charged Tuesday that the Chevron oil refinery in El Segundo has violated the federal Clean Water Act by illegally dumping thousands of pounds of pollutants into Santa Monica Bay over the last five years despite warnings to clean up its operations.

In a major civil environmental lawsuit filed in Los Angeles, the government accused the oil company of 880 violations of federal pollutant discharge limits since 1981 and asked for fines that could total as much as $8.8 million.

U.S. Atty. Robert C. Bonner, whose office filed the action on behalf of the Justice Department and the Environmental Protection Agency, said the pollutants dumped into Santa Monica Bay by Chevron U.S.A. included oil and grease, chromium, ammonia and solid waste materials.

Calling the bay “one of Southern California’s most precious natural resources,” Bonner said the suit was part of a “determined effort” to “get tough on those companies and entities which drag their feet” in complying with federal clean water standards.

A spokesman at the Chevron plant at El Segundo, Rod Spackman, said the oil company has already spent $25 million for waste treatment disposal and plans to spend another $22 million in the next year to “bring us up to 100% compliance” with federal regulations.

“It takes time,” Spackman said. “You don’t have a design for this kind of thing that you can buy off a shelf. We have made significant improvements and we will be in line with the standards by the end of next year.”

Assistant U.S. Atty. James R. Arnold said Chevron, the only oil refinery that discharges directly into Santa Monica Bay, has a permit from the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board for waste-water discharges but has been in almost constant violation of the permit’s limits for the last five years.

He said the company entered into a cease-and-desist order with regional water officials in 1984 but was fined $58,000 last year for violating the discharge limits.

“They are moving into compliance,” Arnold said. “The purpose of this suit, in part, is to take the profit out of having been out of compliance for so long. The possible fine is $10,000 a day for every one of the 880 violations, which adds up to $8.8 million.”

While the Chevron spokesman maintained that the company already is “99% in compliance” with government rules, the Justice Department suit cited several specific violations in which Chevron dumped almost 10 times the legal amount of various pollutants into the ocean near El Segundo.

Grease Limit Exceeded

On Feb. 14, for example, the lawsuit said that the company exceeded its allowable limit of 2,155 pounds of oil and grease for the day by dumping 20,922 pounds into the bay.

On many other occasions beginning in 1981, according to the suit, Chevron regularly exceeded its discharge limits on ammonia, solid waste and low-oxygen effluents by three to four times the permissible figures.

The federal lawsuit came just two weeks after charges by organizers of Proposition 65, a toxic waste initiative, that Chevron was leading a statewide fight against the measure, which would ban the discharge of cancer-causing chemicals into drinking water and double state penalties for toxic pollution.

Tom Epstein, campaign manager for the initiative proposal, said Tuesday that he found it “ironic that the leader of the fight against us has just been sued by the Feds as a polluter.”

Danger From Chromium

Epstein said chromium is a particularly dangerous pollutant, identified as potentially cancer-causing to humans. While federal officials said chromium discharges by Chevron have exceeded the permitted limits, the company maintained that no significant amounts have been dumped into Santa Monica Bay.

The suit against Chevron, which has a capacity to process 400,000 barrels of oil a day at its El Segundo plant, was the second major federal lawsuit in the last decade against a Santa Monica Bay polluter. The first federal action was filed in 1977 against the City of Los Angeles for dumping sewage into the bay at the Hyperion waste treatment plant near Los Angeles International Airport.

While that suit has not been finally resolved, The Times learned last month that the EPA and Los Angeles have reached a tentative agreement that would commit the city to spend $2.3 billion on sewer improvements.

Treatment Deadline

Under the settlement, the city would have until 1998 to fully treat the waste water it dumps into the bay. But the city would have to stop dumping concentrated sewage into the ocean by the end of 1987.

The suit was the second to be filed against the Chevron plant for excess discharges into the bay. The Sierra Club filed a federal suit last year in Los Angeles, which is still pending.

Historically, the pollution of Santa Monica Bay began with dumping of defense industry wastes during World War II. In addition to the city’s Hyperion plant and the Chevron refinery, other pollution sources include runoff from storm drains and the output of a Los Angeles County sewage plant in Carson that pipes effluent into the ocean along the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica), a leader in efforts to qualify the bay for federal EPA emergency cleanup funds, called the Justice Department suit “a very welcome event” that should speed Chevron’s compliance with discharge regulations.

“The days of turning our back to Santa Monica Bay are certainly over, but it will take a long time to heal,” Hayden said. “Federal action has been needed, because that’s where the big fines can be levied against polluters. A fine of $8 (million) or $9 million should get Chevron’s attention.”